The annual event is led by the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), with support from the Sierra Club's Cumberland Chapter and a host of other groups including the Kentucky Environmental Foundation, Interfaith Power and Light, and the Louisville Climate Action Network, among many others.

"The Sierra Club has been supporting this event for many years, and we mobilized a lot of our members to go," says Louisville-based Sierra Club organizer Thomas Pearce. "It's always an empowering day. People who love our sacred mountains come together in greater and greater numbers every year and send a strong message to the Kentucky state government that we want them to protect our mountains and our water, and stand up for a better quality of life for the people of Appalachia."

Drew Foley, chair of the Greater Louisville Sierra Club, and his wife Jayne were among the ralliers. That's the Foleys, at left above and below, holding the Sierra Club banner on the capitol steps.

"This is the third year we've done the march, and it's always a great experience," Drew says. "We gather at a bridge over the Kentucky River and then walk about half a mile up the hill to the capitol. There's chanting, signing, people are carrying signs, banners, American flags, valentines for the governor—it's fun. But it's for a serious purpose; outlawing mountaintop removal and protecting Kentucky's streams."

January 23, 2013

Earlier this month, coalition partner and Puerto Rico Sierra Club member Carmen Guerrero Pérez, above and at right below, was nominated and sworn in by newly-elected Governor Alejandro García Padilla as Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.

Below, one of the wild beaches fringing the Corridor, also known as the NEC. These beaches are critical nesting ground for the endangered leatherback sea turtle—the world's largest sea turtle. For the last eight years the Puerto Rico Sierra Club has hosted the Festival del Tinglar (leatherback festival).

Photo by Luis Villanueva-Cubero

"Carmen and Luis Jorge Rivera, a longtime Sierra Club activist and NEC expert, were the two people who really launched the fight to protect the Corridor," says Puerto Rico Chapter Director Camilla Feibelman. "Carmen has worked closely with the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust and was a key player in getting the Sierra Club chapter established. I am just so amazingly proud of Carmen."

With her appointment, Guerrero Pérez became just the second woman to head up the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.

"Her appointment has been welcomed by people linked to the defense of the environment and the fight to protect the Northeast Ecological Corridor and stop developments like Costa Serena [a massive residential and tourist development that would threaten leatherback nesting grounds and Puerto Rico's largest mangrove forest]," reports the El Nueva Dia newspaper.

Guerrero Pérez said one of her first orders of business as Secretary will be to to develop a project to educate children and youth about responsible management of natural resources.

Among her stated goals are to integrate more communities into the management of protected areas, promote volunteerism of students and other citizens to work with those areas, strengthen the view that natural resources are one of the country's main attractions, and promote educational initiatives on the economic value of green infrastructure, including water resources. "Our mountain forests and aquifers are our water generation plant," she told El Nueva Dia. Guerrero aims to fully implement Puerto Rico's Water Plan and reforest watersheds to protect the island's water resources.

"It's been a long road of building demand to protect the Corridor, building grassroots power and securing governmental support, and taking delivery," says Feibelman. "It feels like a mini-miracle. It's a new day in Puerto Rico: a new governor, new legislators in the Corridor district, a new mayor in Luquillo (the "gateway" town to the Corridor), and now Carmen in Natural Resources—all in favor of protecting the Corridor!"

November 08, 2012

It's hard to imagine the mouth of the Columbia River, where American explorers Lewis and Clark traversed during the 19th century, being overrun with a huge natural-gas export terminal and massive pipelines, just to stuff the pockets of dirty-energy companies.

But as crazy as that sounds, a proposal to build this terminal and its pipelines is in the works, along with another one in southern Oregon. And if you're at all involved in the movement to stop natural gas companies from exporting their product to lucrative foreign markets, then you have an ally in Ted Gleichman, a Portland resident who is doing everything he can to keep the natural legacy of Oregon and the Columbia River intact.

"The challenge is fighting multi-billion dollar projects that create short-term jobs but at a very high direct environmental cost, in terms of damage to Columbia River estuaries and the damage pipelines at the width of interstate highways will do," Gleichman says.

The proposal along the Columbia is for a $7.1 billion set of projects that would connect natural gas drilling and fracking in Canada and the Rockies to an export terminal near historic Astoria, Oregon, to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Asia -- where the price is five times the price in North America. More than 200 miles of enormous pipelines would run south from the Canadian border through Washington state, tunnel under the Columbia River, and cut through northwestern Oregon to a massive industrial plant -- complete with three 20-story gas-storage tanks -- at the heart of salmon breeding grounds.

Activists at a recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hearing.

Gleichman and other Sierra Club activists are helping to lead the charge to stop this export proposal, and another in southern Oregon. They've joined a coalition of other organizations -- Columbia Riverkeeper, Rogue Riverkeeper, Earthjustice, to name a few -- that are wondering what this barrage of natural gas and Big Coal export proposals would mean for the Columbia River and the Oregon forests and coastline.

"This is a victory for everyone—the environment, the state of Michigan, and the people who enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the Au Sable River," says Anne Woiwode, director of the Sierra Club's Michigan Chapter.

Featured in the book Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before you Die, the Au Sable is a Wild & Scenic River, a designated blue ribbon trout stream, and is widely considered to be one of the premier brown trout fisheries east of the Rockies—many would say in the entire Lower 48. Anglers, who come from all over the world to fish the Au Sable, refer to one especially renowned stretch of the river as "the Holy Water" (pictured below).

Photo by Adolph Greenberg

Among the many heroes in the fight to protect the Au Sable and the Mason Tract are Sierra Club forest ecologist Marvin Roberson, chapter volunteer Nancy Shiffler, Sierra Club attorney Marianne Dugan, and Calvin "Rusty" Gates, who founded Anglers of the Au Sable in 1987 with five other Michigan anglers. A former "Angler of the Year" in Fly Rod & Reel magazine, Gates served as president of Anglers of the Au Sable from its founding until 2009, when he died at age 54 after a year-long battle with lung cancer.

"Rusty was a quiet guy, but when he spoke, people listened," says Bruce Pregler, the current president of Anglers of the Au Sable. "He knew how to find the right players and get them involved. We met with Marvin in 2003 and developed a battle plan, and the Sierra Club brought key people to the table for us, like Marianne Dugan, who was just phenomenal. Once we got in the trenches it was a total team effort. This victory is a tribute to the perseverance of the Sierra Club and Anglers of the Au Sable."

Savoy Energy's proposal to drill in a renowned angler's paradise helped cement the alliance between sportsmen and conservationists in Michigan. "Anglers are up in arms over this," Gates said in 2006, when the area was still very much under threat. "We'll be darned if they're going to ruin once of the most special places we've got left."

Two years earlier in the town of Grayling, the closest town of any size to the Mason Tract, 500 of the town's 2,000 residents showed up to speak out against drilling at a public hearing. Roberson says Savoy's drilling proposal elicited more public comments than any project in Michigan's history. And the Sierra Club and Anglers of the Au Sable were the catalysts for this outpouring.

"The combination of the Sierra Club's policy expertise coupled with the extensive on-the-ground knowledge of Anglers of the Au Sable made for a terrific partnership," says Roberson, pictured below in the Mason Tract. "The Mason Tract is safe for now, but we have to stay vigilant and hope this sets a precedent so other companies won't try to foolishly drill near our few remaining precious pieces of wilderness."

September 25, 2012

Illinois and Wisconsin Sierra Club activists celebrated last month when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited Illinois to announce the establishment of the new 11,200-acre Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge. Straddling the Illinois-Wisconsin border, Hackmatack is roughly equidistant from Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison, Wisconsin.

Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Salazar, pictured above with Illinois Sierra Club activist Cindy Skrukrud, was joined at the August 15 announcement in the new refuge by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who was instrumental in getting Hackmatack established.

Durbin, a Democrat, thanked fellow Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, for his support leading to the designation of the refuge. "When it comes to Hackmatack, it's bipartisan," Durbin said.

That's Durbin, below at left, with Salazar and Ed Collins, natural resource manager for the McHenry County, Illinois, Conservation District. Collins was part of the core group that sought national wildlife refuge designation for Hackmatack.

"The Midwest doesn't have mountains and it doesn't have geysers and it doesn't have giant redwoods," Collins told the Elgin Courier-News. "It's a very, very slow magic and it sometimes takes a lifetime to appreciate it. But some of the rarest living things on the planet, they live in Northeastern Illinois and Southeastern Wisconsin."

Collins, who grew up in Chicago, got hooked on the outdoors during boyhood summers canoeing on the Fox River, which rises just west of Milwaukee and flows south into Illinois, where it empties into the Illinois River about 75 miles southwest of Chicago.

"The native communities [in Hackmatack] have a national significance," he said, "and the national wildlife refuge is a designation that means something outside of the region."

The Sierra Club was a key player in the Friends of Hackmatack partnership, which has been working since 2004 to make the new wildlife refuge a reality. "The Hackmatack Refuge is a testament to the power of ordinary citizens to protect the landscapes they love," said Jack Darin, Illinois Chapter Director.

September 11, 2012

Last week the Sierra Club's North Star Chapter hosted a photo booth at the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul, where Sierra Club volunteers asked Minnesotans to share their thoughts on what they'd most like to protect in "Minnesota's Great Outdoors." In turn, volunteers shared the conservation issues they're most passionate about and explained why they're active with the Sierra Club.

"North Star Chapter volunteers filled nearly 200 shifts at the booth—a total of 432 hours over 12 days—and collected nearly 1,500 photos," says Sierra Club organizing manager Michelle Rosier. "We gave everyone a handout with the chapter's priorities, with details on one activity in each priority, and provided the link where they can download their photo. So far, more than 700 people have viewed their photos online!"

The chapter plans to turn the photos—and the hundreds of postcards signed by people who didn't get their photo taken—into an album to deliver to Governor Mark Dayton, outlining the Sierra Club's conservation objectives for the North Star State.

August 03, 2012

Late this spring, the Sierra Club's Watauga Group celebrated a big victory when 8,600 acres of Doe Mountain, in the state's northeastern corner, was officially saved from clear-cutting and exclusive private development.

"This is a huge win, and it protects a significant portion of our Watauga Watershed," says Gloria Griffith, right, chair of the Watauga Group.

Among the top priorities of the Watauga Group (the Tennessee Sierra Club's newest group) has been protecting water quality in Doe Creek, a spring-fed creek that runs around Doe Mountain. Doe Creek supports an exceptional wild rainbow trout population and some of the largest fish sampled in Tennessee streams in recent years.

The creek flows then into Watauga Lake, a Tennesee Valley Authority reservoir that sits 1,959 feet above sea level and is known for its exceptionally clean water. TVA describes the lake as being located "...in some of the most beautiful country in the Tennessee River watershed."

Thanks to the heads-up work of Watauga Group activists, notably Gabby Lynch and Dennis Shekinah, Doe Mountain will remain forested and open to the public. That's Shekinah at left, below; Lynch at right.

Let's let Dennis tell the story (which appeared in the June/July issue of the Tennessee Chapter's newsletter, the Tenne-Sierran):

Doe Mountain encompasses 8,600 acres of wilderness known best by hunters on foot and Tennessee Wildlife Research Agency officers in 4-wheel-drive vehicles. It is home to black bear, white tail, fox, coyote, turkey, king squirrel, bobcat and, some say, cougar.

Left alone for generations, this slice of heaven is about to change. Soon, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), horses, mountain bikes, and hikers from all corners will be drawn to Doe, altering its timeless and peaceful character forever. Let me explain why this is a good thing...

July 30, 2012

The Club's Puerto Rico Chapter won a huge victory the last week of June when Governor Luis Fortuño signed a law protecting 1,950 acres of the island's Northeast Ecological Corridor (NEC) as a nature reserve, sparing the Corridor from massive proposed resort development in one of the most important nesting grounds on earth for the endangered Leatherback sea turtle.

Victories like this don't happen overnight. The Puerto Rico Chapter has been working to protect the NEC since the chapter's inception in 2005—in fact, Sierra Club activists on the Isle of Enchantment have been working to protect the Corridor for more than 15 years, ever since two megaresorts were proposed by Marriott International and Four Seasons Resorts in 1996.

Over this time, Puerto Rico Sierra Club activists collected thousands of petition signatures, put on the Festival del Tinglar (Leatherback Turtle Festival) six years in a row, led tours of the Corridor, lobbied the state legislature, and turned out citizens in big numbers for rallies and public hearings.

Key to the eventual victory was the ability of the Sierra Club and its coalition partners to turn out more than 500 citizens to a critical public hearing on the fate of the NEC in February 2011. (The Sierra Club was a founding member of the Northeast Ecological Corridor Coalition.)

On Saturday, February 5, 2011, the Sierra Club of Puerto Rico, together with our coalition partners, got 533 people to turn out to the state government's public hearings on the proposed fragmentation of the Northeast Ecological Corridor. Our goal was to turn out 500 citizens, and we exceeded that by 33 people.

From our database of 25,000 people we pulled names from the towns of Luquillo and Fajardo, two communities near the Corridor, and called as many of them as we could over the course of five or six call nights. We also called people who had received our kids' presentation on Leatherback sea turtles and the NEC, or who had gone on an excursion in the Corridor. We invited all of the artisans, businesspeople, and schools that have participated in our Leatherback Turtle Festival.

In order to populate our call nights with volunteers, we put each of our teams in charge of one particular night. One night was the kids' presentation team, another night our membership committee, another night was our Sierra Student Coalition group, another night the excursions committee, etc. Then on the final day we called all the "yeses."

We then held a series of lead-up events to the hearing, including a community breakfast on the street, and excursions to the Corridor with upwards of 80 people. We conducted a morning phone-calling campaign to our local talk radio shows and supplemented them with a couple of purchased radio spots. We paid for a week of announcements on what's called a "tumbacoco" (so loud it knocks the coconuts of the tree)—a car with speakers on top to announce the event. We also handed out flyers and put up posters in several neighborhoods.

The day of the hearing was amazing. We organized a demonstration of fifty people at the base of the building. At 10 o'clock we marched up seven flights of stairs, chanting together. We then walked into the hearing room together silently, with our placards raised. The room was packed and we had to rent an additional one hundred chairs to accommodate the crowd. An amazing array of people testified, and we generated a significant amount of earned media.

Much more work remained to be done, but this show of support at this particular juncture was critical. The following spring, the Puerto Rico House and Senate both unanimously passed a bill protecting the Corridor, with both local parties joining in their entirety as co-authors. And on June 25, 2012, the governor, recognizing the depth and breadth of public support for protecting the Corridor, signed the bill into law, protecting 1,950 public acres of the NEC as a nature reserve.

This victory is proof that when people participate in government they can make true change. The people spoke and the governor had to listen.

Working with the Missouri Stream Team program and more than two dozen Ozark partner groups, businesses, and supporters, some 146 volunteers—including 26 kids—collected more than a ton of trash along 25 miles of river by canoe, kayak, and on foot. Hundreds of pounds of recovered trash were recycled.

"I'm blessed to have a group of volunteers who worked with me doing hauling, set-up, and pretty much anything I asked," says Angel.

No one was paid a dime, but the Missouri Stream Team fed everyone a BBQ dinner and raffled off a brand new canoe (for free) after the cleanup. The St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals baseball teams also donated half a dozen tickets, and the St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs football teams donated a signed hat and a signed photo of their quarterback, respectively. "Not bad!" Angel says.

"For the locals, it was just another day of service to show some love to this river that they cherish," says Water Sentinels national director Scott Dye, himself a Missourian. Below, high bluffs along a wild stretch of the Jacks Fork.

June 06, 2012

Saying Jamie Patrick likes to swim is a little like saying Popeye likes spinach. The San Leandro, Ca., native began swimming at the age of seven and, as he puts it, "I haven't stopped since. Swimming and water are my passion—they've given me so much in life."

An all-American swimmer in high school, Patrick earned a full swimming scholarship to attend the University of Hawaii, and two years after graduating he clocked the 11th-fastest time ever recorded in the English Channel Relay Swim.

By day, Patrick is Sales Manager for Patrick & Co., the oldest office supply company in San Francisco, founded by his great-grandfather in 1873. When he's not in the office—where he is striving, among other things, to green the family business—he's usually with his wife Terry and 6-year-old daughter Grace. But he has also found the time to complete more than 100 triathlons, 15 Ironman competitions, three marathons, and he was named 2011 World Open Water Male Swimmer of the Year.

Patrick has by now swum all over the world, including in New Zealand, Brazil, Italy, Austria, Bermuda, Belize, Mexico, the Caribbean islands, Hawaii, and Tahiti. Closer to home, he recently completed a double crossing of Lake Tahoe—a 44-mile swim that took 25 hours of continuous swimming—and a 111-mile swim down the Sacramento River in northern California, below, that took 31 hours.

"I obviously had to stay up all night to complete those swims," he says, "but there comes a point where I get into a rhythm and push through the pain and the swimming actually gets easier. And there are times when it just gets magical and you really feel you become one with your environment. During the night I spent on the Sacramento, there were river otters swimming all around me, and egrets that seemed to be following me downriver in the moonlight.

"I'm not out primarily to set records," Patrick says, "I'm out for personal journeys." He has also decided to combine his extreme swimming with advocacy for causes he believes in.

His Sacramento River swim attracted more than 40,000 online viewers who followed the swim live through Patrick's website, and the event raised awareness and roughly $25,000 for an elementary school literacy program in Contra Costa County, where Patrick and his family live.

Now Patrick has his sights set on something even more ambitious: a non-stop swim of the 69-mile circumference of Lake Tahoe, a feat that he anticipates will take about 40 hours. To Patrick's knowledge, the undertaking he is calling the Tahoe 360 has never before been attempted, let alone completed.

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